Lake Télamine in Algeria, a new breeding site of the Greater Flamingo Phoenicopterus roseus.

For a very long time, the Greater FlamingoPhoenicopterus roseus was deemed to be a wintering species in Algeria. It now breeds in a number of localities in the Hauts Plateaux and the Sahara. A new nesting site, Lake Télamine, located in northwest Algeria, has recently been discovered. This finding reflects the continuous increase in Greater Flamingo numbers in Algeria and underlines the important role of Algerian wetlands in the dynamics of the western Mediterranean metapopulation of the species.

An estimated number of 12 000 flamingos were present and were distributed mainly in the southern part of the lake where the nesting took place, and about 4 000 individuals were feeding in the northern part. In the South, we could distinguish four nuclei each comprising more than a thousand birds lined up on vegetation islets. In these straight sectors, flamingos were parading or building their nests. Some were brooding. However, these latter (about thirty) represented only a very small percentage of the total numbers of flamingoes present. All these facts lead us to situate a beginning of breeding initiated in early June 2015.